Overview
FaxMaker Online users sending faxes from Microsoft Outlook may sometimes experience that only the coverpage is successfully delivered to the recipients and the rest of the fax content is not.
This will usually happen with faxes sent to a particular number and only affecting a particular user while other users are able to fax to the same number without problems. Sometimes the same user is able to successfully send outbound faxes to other numbers.
The activity log for this user will show shows that only one page was delivered for multi-page fax and sending the same fax to a different number results in successful delivery without any problems.
Solution
This problem is caused by a Microsoft Outlook issue where certain recipient email addresses are cached with an incorrect flag that results in a winmail.dat file being attached to the email-to-fax request after the user sends it.
Faxmaker online cannot process the winmail.dat file, and because it is attached first we cannot check for the correct attachment.
Follow the steps below in order to resolve this issue:
- Open a New Mail window in Outlook.
- Enter a 1 in the
TO:field – this should bring up a list of email-to-fax addresses, including the one that failed to process the attachment. - Hit the down arrow key, then the Delete key.
- Continue to do so until all cached addresses are cleared.
- Repeat the process with digits 2 through 9
This will clear the cached addresses, and as such the winmail.dat attachment will not be triggered.
Alternatively, if webmail access is available for the account through Outlook Web Access (OWA), the user can be advised to send outbound faxes through OWA instead.
Further reading to understand why Outlook sometimes generates the winmail.dat attachment:
- How email message formats affect Internet email messages in Outlook
- How to Prevent Winmail.dat Attachments from Being Sent in Outlook
Testing
Ask the user experiencing the issue to send a test fax to the number that was failing before and confirm successful transmission for the multi-page fax.